Spiegel im Spiegel
Last night I just could not get to sleep. I tossed and turned, and my mind just kept racing around and around and around.
I typically don’t have this problem—typically I can just lay down and clear my mind of distractions and quickly drift off. But, my current situation is a bit unusual. I’ve been sick the last few days, sicker than I’ve been in years. And I don’t seem to be improving much at all.
I’m also on the cusp of moving out of my parents’ house and into the start of my adult life (less than a month away!). So the adult worries are becoming real to me—especially the worry of “where will I live?”
And finally, in my sick downtime, I’ve been reading a lot of “The Great Brain” book series, which describes a pretty idyllic town in the 1890s.
So as I was lying in bed last night trying to sleep, my half-asleep brain just kept going over and over and over scenarios where I was in the 1890s and trying to find an apartment and wondering how I would pay for everything. It was actually really stressful.
And no matter how long I laid there, I could seem to get past the half-asleep dreamish state.
But then I remembered a song I first heard in college: Spiegel im Spiegel. The name comes from German and means “Mirror in Mirror”. And it truly lives up to its name. It’s a duet for piano and violin that just repeats back and forth for over ten minutes, but in a very calming, relaxing way. I set this one song on repeat, and I was asleep in 20 minutes.